Tag: family

The good news is that a lot of travel insurance policies cover children for free (some up to the age of two, some right up until 16 or 18). The bad news is that even if yours does, you still need to get in touch with your insurer before you travel to ensure that your baby or toddler is included on the policy by name. You’ll need to give them your baby’s date of birth too, and tell them about any pre-existing medical conditions – epilepsy, for example – as these might affect the premium. Children insured for free are usually only covered when travelling with the policyholder, so check with your insurer if you’re planning on sending your toddler off with another family member.

If you’re buying a new policy, you’ll include your child’s details in the same way that you would your partner’s when buying a couple’s policy. Something to look out for is whether the policy covers cancellation in the case of one of the travellers falling ill before departure. Fingers crossed your toddler doesn’t come down with a horrible bug on the eve of a holiday, but if she does, and going ahead with the trip is impossible, you really don’t want to lose all the money you spent on flights, hotel, car hire, etc – the cancellation of the trip would be grim enough all by itself; you don’t want to compound it with financial stress too. It’s worth buying travel insurance as soon as you book your trip so you don’t run the risk of being caught without coverage.

Most insurers will need to see a medical certificate signed by your child’s GP stating the reason she can’t travel, before they agree to settle the claim, as well as a form from the doctor about your child’s medical history.

A lot of policies will cover you for travel within the UK (including cancellations due to illness) but there are often stipulations you need to meet – such as staying away from home for a minimum number of days, or travelling a minimum distance from home – before coverage kicks in. Check before you travel.

There’s no interesting way of illustrating the purchase of travel insurance, so here’s a picture of the baby girl enjoying herself at Mgarr ix-Xini on the Maltese island of Gozo in November 2017 instead.

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Travelling a lot for work, I prefer to spend as little time packing – or thinking about packing – as possible. Nerdy though it may sound, I never start the process without consulting one of several packing lists – city break, hot climate, cold climate, hiking, scuba diving, etc.

The baby girl was four-weeks-old the first time we went away with her, to a cottage in Wales to celebrate my mother-in-law’s 70th birthday over a long weekend. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t have a packing list for the task at hand. After a chaotic day and night throwing baby stuff into various receptacles almost at random, we managed to hit the road. My partner driving, I immediately set about writing a list.

Here it is, more tidily laid out than in the original version on my phone, and with a few annotations. I hope you find it useful. If there’s anything I’ve missed, please add your own packing essentials in the comments (I’ll be doing a separate post on travelling in hot climates – if you want advice about what to pack for a hot climate trip in the meantime, drop me a line in the comments below).

Nappies8-12 nappies per 24 hours away, depending how much your baby is pooing in the days leading up to your departure. You can almost always buy nappies where you’re staying, but if you’re travelling with a very small baby, or are going somewhere remote, better to be safe than sorry and take enough from home to last you for the whole trip.

Pram/pushchairSunshade for napping, plus a bag of some kind to pack the pushchair into if you’re flying. We have the official travel bag (bought on eBay) for our Bugaboo Bee (also eBay), which is excellent because it protects the pushchair from being chucked around by baggage handlers and also gives you extra space to stow baby stuff. If you don’t want to buy the official version for your pushchair, there are generics available. But go for one with wheels and/or backpack straps if possible. In a pinch you can use a heavy duty bin liner for each bit of the pushchair (and remember to pack extras for the return journey).

Travel cot/tent/bassinetHaving been on a couple of trips now where the cot provided hasn’t been fit for purpose, I highly recommend bringing one of your own.

WipesOne pack of wipes per 72 hours away. Though you can buy baby wipes when you arrive, the options might be pretty rubbish – very highly scented, for example, or not suitable for sensitive skin – so if you’re fussy about these things, just bring a couple of extra packets from home.

Baby food in jars or pouches for emergenciesPlus any type of food you really couldn’t live without while you’re away. The baby girl is a bit of a fussy eater at the moment, but will always polish off a big bowl of porridge for breakfast, so we take a small Tupperware container of oats away with us if we’re self-catering just in case we can’t find any locally at our destination.

Baby/toddler spoons

Bibs/smocks

Laundry detergentA small quantity for washing bibs so you don’t have to pack one for every meal.

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The first time I went to the Ministry of Sound – at the tender age of 16 – someone threw up on my shoes in the queue. On this most recent visit, to check out indoor family festival Rave-A-Roo, the worst that happened was a leaky nappy. I think you could call that progress.

Launched in early 2016, Rave-A-Roo is a brilliant concept: an opportunity for children to dance, play and generally run wild in an environment so stimulating that it takes them all weekend to wind down again, while their parents drink overpriced prosecco and indulge in nostalgia for their clubbing days.

The baby girl isn’t really Rave-A-Roo’s target audience, but babies are welcome, and there are enough exciting things to look at (giant disco ball, anyone?) and different places to sit to make this little adventure worth the trouble.

Clouds of bubbles waft over us as I park the pushchair in an undercover area in the venue’s courtyard, a suitably enthusiastic DJ Cuddles (I’m desperate to know if he uses this stage name for adult gigs too) playing pop tunes in front of tables covered with jewellery-making paraphernalia.

Worried about the volume levels, I bring the baby girl’s ear defenders, but they end up staying in my bag. The main room – headlined by none other than everyone’s favourite ovine film star Shaun the Sheep – would be too loud to go without ear protection for longer than a few minutes, but the baby girl isn’t interested in being in there anyway. Crawling is all she wants to do right now, and the main room isn’t the place for it, so despite the temptation of a flock of inflatable ducks, we leave it to the bigger kids.

We spend most of our time in the Funky Soft Play Room, carving out a corner for ourselves in the midst of dozens of wired toddlers. The soft play isn’t quite as soft as it should be – the only cushioning on the floor of the inflatable that holds the soft play equipment is a few rag rugs – and there’s no one in authority keeping the rowdier children from going rogue. The small pile of baby toys in the corner is welcome, but positioned in such a way that it feels like we’re in constant danger of being stepped on.

The other place we hang out is Chill-A-Roo, aka the Ministry’s VIP area, which overlooks the main bar on one side and the biggest club room on the other. No concessions to the family crowd here apart from a barista serving proper coffees, but the baby girl is happy enough sitting on a banquette and hitting her cup against the table while I drink a hot chocolate.

At £12.10 for early bird tickets (going up to an eye-watering £25 on the door) for adults and children over the age of 18 months, Rave-A-Roo isn’t cheap, but the super friendly vibe, plus nice touches like nappy change supplies in the loos, swings it for me. The baby girl will be too little to really appreciate it for a while yet, but if Rave-A-Roo is still running in two or three years’ time, you can find us in da club.

The baby girl larging it in the Funky Soft Play Room at Rave-A-Roo at Ministry of Sound.

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Almost every time we travel with our baby monitor we discover on returning home that we’ve left at least one part of it behind, necessitating either a trip to retrieve it or getting someone to post it back to us. The irritation we feel at our own idiocy is even more acute in those situations when the monitor hasn’t actually done its job, whether because the distances involved were too great, or the signal was blocked by thick walls or floors.

Fortunately, some friends introduced us to the Baby Monitor 3G app; not only does our regular baby monitor now stay safely at home when we travel, but we can be confident that we’ll be able to keep an eye on the baby girl in whatever situation we find ourselves in while on the move.

It’s extremely simple to use. You just buy and download the app on two devices – it’s available on Apple and Android phones, watches and tablets, plus Mac computers and Apple TV – and pair them, nominating one as the ‘baby station’ and one as the ‘parent station’. The app runs live video (or just audio, which uses less data) over wifi or 3G networks, and you can change the sensitivity of the microphone to suit the surroundings.

The app costs between £3.59 and £4.99 per device, plus any data charges if you’re using it over 3G, but that’s it – no in-app purchases or anything of that rubbish. Great for grandparents or other family members who only need a baby monitor on an ad hoc basis, and also for travel scenarios where you don’t have access to mains power, such as when camping.

When travelling by myself with the baby girl I take an old handset along so I can keep both my phone and laptop with me while still using the app. The spare handset is useful for travelling as a family too – god forbid one of us having to cope without our phone for the evening: how would we tweet about what a nice time we were having?

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I’m very much a fair weather walker. Various members of my family will happily set off up a hill in driving rain, but if there’s not at least a reasonable chance of it clearing up in the foreseeable future, count me out. I like hiking, but being soaked to the skin on a cloudy mountaintop just isn’t my idea of fun.

I tell you this to make it clear that hiking with your baby isn’t just the preserve of hardcore walkers. If you enjoyed the occasional hike before your baby arrived, don’t be afraid to give it a go now that she’s here; as with all things baby-related, it’s just a matter of being prepared.

An all-terrain buggy will serve you well if you’re out and about in relatively flat countryside, but this post is really about the sorts of outdoor excursions that you wouldn’t attempt with a pushchair. For those, you’ll need a sling or baby carrier backpack. Which you choose depends on the age of your child, the type and duration of your walk and who’s doing the carrying. Don’t attempt a hike without some means of transporting your child, even if your toddler is a very confident walker; it’s highly unlikely she’ll be up for toddling along beside you for more than a few minutes and you’ll spend the rest of the walk carrying her in your arms.

We only started hiking with the baby girl when she was 10 months old, by which time she was big enough to fit into a backpack carrier. There are lots of different types available, but ours (which we picked up cheap in a charity shop) does up around the waist so there’s less pressure on the wearer’s shoulders, has lots of space for stowing all your other baby kit (of which more later) and a frame that means it stands up by itself, making loading and unloading the baby girl much easier.

The only trouble is that all of those useful features add weight and bulk – I’m fairly slim and only 164cm (5’ 4”) tall, and the carrier plus an increasingly heavy baby girl is too much for me. So my partner uses the backpack carrier and I use the lightweight sling, ideally with someone else carrying the rest of the baby gear (more on how brilliant slings are in this recent post). If it were just me, lugging the baby girl and all of both our stuff, I wouldn’t attempt a walk longer than an hour or so.

Whatever set up you opt for, you want to keep additional weight to a minimum, while ensuring you’re prepared for all eventualities. Take the lightest possible changing mat, a couple of nappies and a few wipes in a ziplock bag rather than your usual nappy change wallet. Spare clothes (including a hat) are essential, especially if your child is in a backpack carrier – you’ll warm up quickly as you walk, but your baby will be sitting still, exposed to the elements.

We eschew trousers and socks in favour of pyjamas with feet to stop the baby girl getting cold legs when her trousers inevitably ride up. Waterproof trousers to go over the top are a good idea if you’re walking anywhere with the possibility of rain. It might sound like overkill but for hikes in locations where the weather can quickly take a turn for the worse, it can’t hurt to bring a lightweight storm shelter.

Don’t be too ambitious when it comes to route planning, even if you’re an experienced walker. A hike that might have taken a couple of hours baby-free can easily become the work of an entire afternoon once you’ve factored in pauses for snacks; bottle or breastfeeding; giving parental shoulders a break; and pointing and laughing at sheep. Remember, too, that there’s no shame in cutting a walk short if things aren’t working out as planned.

Parents of rolling or crawling babies should consider packing a mat or blanket; breastfeeding mothers will appreciate having somewhere dry to sit too. If you’re bottle-feeding, ready-to-drink formula is much more convenient on the move than making it up from powder. Finally, keep a ready supply of snacks in your pockets that you can produce with a flourish as a solution to sudden onset baby crankiness – you’ll all have a much nicer time.

Our first proper hike with the baby girl, climbing Lingmell in the Lake District in July 2017. She was sound asleep when this was taken.

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I’m not looking forward to the day the baby girl outgrows her pop-up tent travel cot. We bought it for a trip to Goa when she was four-months-old, and have used it every time we’ve gone away since then, at hotels, B&Bs, in our campervan, when staying with friends and relatives, and for nearly a month over the summer when we were working in Edinburgh.

It’s handy for a lot of reasons, the primary one being that it functions almost like a separate space within the room because it’s entirely enclosed once it’s zipped up. It’s not soundproof, and it doesn’t entirely block out the light, but it’s better than an open cot in both respects (if it’s not dark enough in the room we’re trying to get the baby girl to sleep in, we usually drape a breathable blanket over the top of the tent). The zip itself is important too: zipping the tent closed works as a sleep cue – for our baby at least (except when it doesn’t, of course). And once it’s closed, it’s a barrier to mosquitos and other insects.

Given how different sleeping in the tent is from sleeping in a cot, you’ll want to do a few practice runs before you go away. It took the baby girl two naps in the tent in our living room at home to get used to it, as I recall.

Depending on your destination and type of trip, you might find the tent useful in the daytime too; and for more than just napping. We put the baby girl in it all the time in Goa so she could roll around with her teething rings and toys in a relatively clean environment. We must have looked ridiculous carting it to and from our room all day, but the staff took it in their stride. We thought we’d use the tent on the beach a lot, but ultimately it was too hot to do that, so we stayed in the beachside restaurant most of the time and took turns going for dips in the sea. We’ve used it camping too, as a way of safely stowing away the baby girl for the moments when two sets of hands are required to set up or strike camp.

Further perks are that it packs down very small and is very light. It’s so small and so light in fact that you can take the tent as carry-on on a plane, or pack it into your luggage. Your actual cot cunningly concealed, you can then pass off another small bag as a travel cot, thereby making the most of your infant baggage allowance of (usually) travel cot, pushchair and car seat. I’ll be covering infant baggage allowance separately in a future post, so sign up to the mailing list if you want to read more (there’s a link on the sidebar on the right).

A major downside of the tent is that it doesn’t provide complete shade, so you can’t rely on it in sunny places – your baby will still need sun cream, a hat, etc. It gets pretty warm in there too – in Goa we used a little battery-operated fan and covered the baby girl with damp muslin squares to keep her cool.

The tent is very easy to pop up and pack away, but the fact that you have to be either on the floor or in a very deep bend to get your child into and out of it means that it won’t be ideal for all parents/carers. We use a conventional travel cot when we take the baby girl to stay at her grandparents’ house.

The baby girl in her pop-up tent travel cot on the beach in Goa, her miniature fan keeping her cool.

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Self-catering accommodation is almost always going to be preferable when travelling with a baby or toddler, but if you need to stay in a hotel or bed and breakfast, here are some tips to make the best of the situation. This post is a little longer than usual, so I’ve split it into two parts; look out for part 2.

Before you book, get in touch to find out what the hotel or B&B provides in terms of in-room amenities. A kettle is very useful for warming up baby food or milk, and a fridge for keeping it cold. If they’re not available – more common in a B&B – ask if you can use the management’s kitchen.

If there’s an option, and you can afford it, always go for a room with an en suite bathroom. It’s easier for baby bedtime, means you can keep dirty nappies separate from where you’re sleeping, and serves as a nightlight if you leave the door open a crack. Also, you don’t want to be traipsing to and from the communal bathroom when you realise you need to pee after you’ve got up to feed or soothe the baby. Ask for a bathroom with a tub; if there isn’t one available, pack a small inflatable paddling pool.

Washing and sterilising bottles is more challenging without a kitchen, but perfectly doable in an en suite if you’ve packed the right paraphernalia. You’ll need a bottle brush, a bit of washing up liquid (though I used shower gel last time and it was fine), cold sterilising tablets, and a Tupperware box with a lid. I’ll do a separate post on this another time.

Many hotels will provide a cot if you request it in advance, but bear in mind that it might be rubbish – the hotel we stayed at in Egypt didn’t include mattresses in theirs. So if you can handle the extra luggage, bring your own travel cot. If not, pack some bedding just in case – this has the added benefit of smelling like home, thereby making your child feel more secure in a new place. The baby girl kicks off her blankets so we use a sleep bag instead (it also comes in handy on planes).

The first few trips we did with the baby girl she slept in the carrycot bit of her pram. When she outgrew that we moved her into a little pop-up tent, which packs down very small and is super light. The other benefit of the tent is that it’s its own contained environment so your baby isn’t distracted by her surroundings. Whichever style of travel cot you opt for, have your baby nap in it a couple of times at home so it’s familiar when you go away.

If your child needs darkness to sleep, consider packing a SnoozeShade to cover the cot. That way you don’t need to worry too much about chinks of light coming in between the curtains, and can have a light on in the room after your baby has gone to sleep but before you’ve gone to bed (I find the buggy model of SnoozeShade invaluable too). For co-sleepers, bring a travel blackout blind instead, which you can sucker onto the window. They’re a bit of a faff to use, but worth it if your baby is very sensitive to light. You’ll want to buy head torches too if you’re co-sleeping – ones with an infrared setting won’t wake the baby but are bright enough to see your way around and to read by.

That’s it for now. I’ll cover dealing with noise, childproofing and some tricks for bedtime in the next post…

The baby girl napping in her tent in our hotel room in Egypt (our hotel rooms are always this messy).

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Trying to get a baby to sleep can be tedious at the best of times. Throw in an unfamiliar location, early starts, late nights, missed naps, hot weather and jet lag and it’s probable that you’ll be spending more hours than you’d like at the start of your holiday pacing around a dark hotel room with a baby in your arms, or sitting next to a cot soothing a grumpy toddler.

Your child will settle into their new surroundings at their own pace, depending on various factors (stay tuned for posts on how to deal with jet lag and hot weather), but in the meantime, a pair of wireless bone-conducting headphones can provide some relief.

Initially developed for military operations, and now used by some cyclists and runners, these headphones sit just below your temples (see picture) and send the sound through your cheekbones to the inner ear, bypassing the ear drum altogether. With nothing in your ears, you can hear the world around you – including the baby being rocked to sleep in your arms – while keeping your brain occupied listening to podcasts, music or audio books. The fact that they’re wireless means no cord to get tangled up in.

My partner bought me a pair of these headphones when I was pregnant and I’ve used them practically every day since the baby girl was born. They came in particularly handy those first few months when I was still feeding her frequently at night and needed something to keep me awake (I recommend getting an Audible account too), but these days it’s when we’re travelling that they’re really useful, whether we’re heading off long distance or just around the local area.

It’s possible to push a buggy one-handed while having a conversation on a mobile, but it’s safer and easier to use wireless headphones instead, and bone-conducting ones mean you’re still aware of traffic noise. I don’t generally listen to podcasts when I’m with the baby girl unless she’s sleeping, but there have been a couple of occasions when I’ve broken that rule, like on the four and half hour train journey back to London after a month at the Edinburgh festival, when I hit a wall of tiredness and had to keep my mind occupied so as not to nod off. It was only by listening to BBC World Service documentaries that I was able to stay awake for yet another round of take-things-out-of-all-the-bags-and-hit-them-against-the-table. I stand by my choice.

At around £100 a pop, these headphones aren’t cheap, but they’re definitely worth it.

What’s on your list of essentials for travelling with babies and toddlers?

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Babies may not seem like ideal companions for gallery-hopping, but with some advance planning, taking a baby to a museum can be a surprisingly fulfilling experience. I’ve actually been on more visits to more museums and galleries with the baby girl than I did in the year leading up to her birth – which is saying something, because, you know, I’m an arts journalist.

The easiest time to take your baby to a museum is before she’s interested in rolling around. Those first few months, it’s just a matter of putting her in a sling and making a note of where the café is so you know where you can sit down and have a rest. You’ll need to bring all the usual baby paraphernalia with you, of course, so I’d recommend taking a pushchair too, or you’ll get pretty tired pretty quickly carrying it all around. Most large museums and galleries will be accessible with a buggy, but if they’re not – or you don’t fancy walking around with it – ask to leave it in the cloakroom. Smaller, quirkier institutions, or those in developing countries, can be less well set up in this regard, so consider packing light and leaving the pushchair at home, in the car, or wherever you’re staying.

Once your baby is of an age where she’s not content to be carried around for extended periods, you need to be pickier about where you’re visiting. Is there an area at the museum you’d like to go to where it would be safe and appropriate to let your baby roll or crawl around on the floor to give her a break from the sling or buggy? Dedicated children’s galleries like the ones at the National Museum of Scotland are ideal, but large foyers like at the Barbican Centre also work, as do immersive installations like Gustav Metzger’s Liquid Crystal Environment at Tate Modern.

Visiting with a small person in tow, you won’t be able to spend hours absorbing every detail of every exhibit in the way that you might if you were there by yourself, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Knowing that you can’t possibly do it all removes the pressure of trying to do so, and the experience can be more enjoyable as a result. That said, if your baby will nap in a sling or buggy, you can probably squeeze in an hour of uninterrupted culture if you time it right.

With toddlers there are a few more things to consider. Lots of museums and galleries run free activity sessions for children and families, so check before you go to see if there’s one that coincides with your visit. Self-guided activity trails can be fun too. If there’s nothing like that on offer, buy a few postcards at the gift shop on your way in, and make a game of finding the object or art work as you go through the museum. Not all toddlers will have the patience for such an activity, but you could try the simpler, DIY version instead: do basic drawings in a notebook of objects that appear – trees, cars, etc – and get your offspring to race around trying to find them.

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Applying for a passport for a child is very similar to applying for an adult, but as it’s probably been a while since you did that for the first time, here’s a refresher.

You can apply online or with a paper form, which you can pick up at the Post Office. The online form is more convenient, but you’re on your own with it, whereas there’s a ‘check and send’ service available with the paper application, via the Post Office.

As with an adult passport you’ll need to include two identical photographs, though the rules about how children and babies must appear in photos are not as stringent as for adults. Children aged five and under don’t have to have a neutral expression and don’t need to be looking straight at the camera. Babies under 12 months can have their eyes closed.

I had the baby girl’s taken at our local Snappy Snaps, with her lying on a beanbag, photographed from above. This got around the problem of trying to support her sitting up without my hands appearing in the picture (she was only two weeks old at the time).

The photos have to be countersigned by someone who has known you (the adult applying on behalf of the child) for at least two years. That someone has to be ‘a person of good standing in the community’ – which is a bit nebulous – or someone who works in or is retired from a ‘recognised profession’. You can find a list of accepted professions here. They can’t be related to you, or live at the same address, and they must be a British or Irish passport holder who lives in the UK.

I know several people who have been tripped up by the countersignature thing, and have seen their child’s application delayed as a result, so be careful with this bit. Make sure the person who does your countersigning has included contact details – the passport office do check up.

For most applications for first passports, the only other piece of paperwork you need, in addition to the form and countersigned photos, is your child’s birth certificate (particular circumstances require additional documentation, though, so do read the forms carefully).

Child passports currently cost £46, or £55.75 if you use the ‘check and send’ service, and you can pay by card, cash or cheque.

If you’ve filled everything in correctly and sent in the right documents, the passport will be ready in about three weeks. If you need it sooner than that, there is a fast track service to turn around a new passport within a week, for which you have to complete the paper form, attend an appointment in person, and pay a total fee of £87. Note that while adult passports can be processed on the same day, the one-day service isn’t available for child passports.

If you do need to attend an appointment, bear in mind that the passport office in central London has lifts and baby change facilities, but there’s nowhere to sit at the counters where you get your application processed. I’m pleased to report, however, that the guy who did the baby girl’s application for me didn’t blink an eye when I had to undertake a few minutes of emergency stand-up breastfeeding at his desk.

You can find more information on applying for passports for children here.

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Baby Adventuring

I’m a freelance travel and arts journalist and, as of autumn 2016, mother to a very cheery baby girl. This is a practical blog inspired by my travels with her, that I hope will be practical and inspiring for you. Have a look at the ‘about’ tab for some context, and check out my journalism at my website, www.jocaird.com